


The Binding of a Trickster

by UnFunny (Quippy)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro Lives, Eldritch Themes, F/F, F/M, Female Akira Kursu, Female Persona 5 Protagonist, Female Ren amamiya - Freeform, Gen, Genderbent AkiRen, M/M, Metaverse (Persona 5), Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sojiro is best dad, Supernatural Stalker, Unplanned Pregnancy, akira does not want to deal with her feelings, god with eldritch tendencies, maruki's alternate reality really messed things up, metaverse shananigans, the thieves just want to help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quippy/pseuds/UnFunny
Summary: The next morning she woke from a nightmare shecouldremember - an eden gone rotten, her hands covered in blood, Maruki standing over her looking beatific as he held out a still beating heart to her to take, a body in black and blue still spasming under her hands - and spent twenty minutes curled over her toilet dry heaving. The thought she still refused to acknowledge circled like a shark, smelling blood. She punched it in the nose and hurried through her morning routine as quickly as she could. Managing, somehow, to skitter away to school before Morgana could corner her about a doctor’s appointment once more.The god was back in her room a few nights later.---Akira returns to Tokyo less than a month after she left, forced to contend with the unwanted courtship of a Metaverse God, a grief she doesn't know what to do with and a growing consequence of Maruki's warped reality that no one could have foreseen.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Kurusu Akira & Confidants, Kurusu Akira & Goro Akechi, Kurusu Akira & Phantom Thieves of Hearts, Kurusu Akira & Sakura Sojiro, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 17
Kudos: 83





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is interested, my tumblr is [here!](https://unfunny-quips.tumblr.com/)

There was a god sitting on the end of her bed.

Akira knew he was there before she even opened her eyes. Could feel the weight of his presence pressing down upon her from all sides, not physical but tangible all the same. It wasn’t the first time he’d come to her, though she couldn’t say she really remembered the time before. A week ago, maybe. She’d woken up, mouth pulled into a scream she could not force past her lips, unsure just what in her dreams had made her heart pound so painfully in her chest.

Now she almost could remember though. A fleeting awareness, the impression of something too vast to be seen or understood. Gasping for air that was no longer there, every inch of the room taken up by a being not wholly real in the way anything outside the Metaverse could perceive it. She almost suffocated the last time, was nearly crushed to death by the timber of his voice, the weight of his gaze.

She opened her eyes and the darkness around her _burned._ Her mind, for all the things she’s seen, was not quite able to comprehend what lurked in the twisting, terrible shape that filled the room. He perched on the end of her bed, stood above her, pressed against her ceiling, lurked in the doorway, curled beside her beneath her covers. He was everywhere and nowhere. Her mind slipping off of the form of a body that could not really exist in her world, refusing to take it all in. She felt nauseous and sick at the sight of him, curling in on herself like a child as if that could somehow stop what was happening.

 _“Trickster,”_ The voice struck her like electricity, burning through her nerve endings and lighting up every pain receptor in her body. “ _Can you hear me?”_

She seized and shook, eyes rolling back in her head. Around her the god retreated, tucked himself back impossibly small, back through the narrow gap between her world and his. It was still too much, her mind cracking in two, body shaking apart around her. Her mouth pulled wide, a scream clawing painfully up her throat -

She awoke with a shutter to Morgana swatting gently at her face with a paw. 

“Hey! Finally!” He chirped, cheerful and oblivious. Akira’s body trembled around her, the tingle of her nerves twitching beneath her skin, burnt out and stinging. She took a breath, counted to ten, and offered the cat above her a smile. She couldn’t remember what the nightmare was about, and really that’s all she could ask for. A small mercy compared to the many nights she yanked herself from sleep, sweating and shaking and haunted by images of a bunker beneath a police station, a death she never experienced, a boy she never got to keep.

“I thought you were going to let me sleep in today?” She asked, hiding her desperate gasp for air with a yawn.

Nightmares have been common since the first time she was arrested a year and a half ago trying to defend a woman from a stumbling drunk. They hadn’t been so bad back then. Largely flashes of the night that had followed that intervention. Being shoved up against a brick wall hard enough to leave her concussed, the stench of Shido’s breath rank and hot against her face, hands groping her before she threw him off, the pain of the resulting beating from the police before she was tossed bruised and bleeding into a detention cell. They got worse the second time she’d been arrested, the days of hazy pain as she was “interrogated” again and again for information already known or entirely fabricated.

It was best to try and not to worry Morgana any more than she already did. He always looks so helpless and sad when he caught her in the aftermath of a nightmare. Unable to do anything but watch her curl in on herself and go still and silent as he tried to talk her down. He learned the hard way how badly she reacted to touch when caught in such a headspace. She’d flung him across the room in such a panic the first time he ended up limping for days afterwards. She still felt horrible about it, even with his reassurances that he was fine.

Besides, giving him what peace of mind she could was the least she could do after her friend had been kind enough and loyal enough to stick with her upon her return to her parents. Even after the realization that he would be offered the same level of courtesy and kindness from Akira’s parents as she herself received. 

Which was to say: none at all.

Aching and stiff from her half-forgotten nightmare, she rolled away from the not-cat to hide her face in her pillow. It helped her block out the fragments of the twisted dream and earned a grumble from Morgana as a bonus. He shoved at her ineffectually with little cat paws in an attempt to get her up. His presence was surprisingly grounding - another indication that whatever had haunted her sleep was different from her usual night terrors - and she allowed herself to be pulled back into her body again, bit by bit. Becoming aware of herself as a person rather than a collection of sensations and memories she couldn’t bring herself to face.

“Akira!” Morgana whined loudly in her ear, “You’ve already slept the entire morning away! I’m hungry!”

The whole morning huh. That would explain the bright sun she could feel warming her skin. Grumbling for show she shoved her blankets - Morgana and all - off of her and hauled herself up to a sitting position. Which, as it turned out, was a _mistake_ as the room tilted and spun around her, nausea slamming into her like a freight train. She tried to bite back a groan and failed miserably. Easing herself back on the bed and curling up on herself she tried to fight the urge to run to the bathroom and lose a breakfast she hadn’t even had yet.

“Hey, are you okay?” Morgana’s bright blue eyes appeared before her, their too human expressiveness pulled into a familiar concern. _Damn_ , so much for not making him worry more than she had to.

“Just feel sick.” She offered, wincing as her stomach cramped. “Think I might be coming down with the flu.” 

Morgana frowned - an odd expression on a cat’s face - and curled up to rub his head against hers reassuringly. “You said you weren’t feeling well before.” He conceded, which was true. She’d been plagued by bouts of nausea and lightheadedness for the past week and a half, though it had only gotten bad enough she couldn’t hide it over the past few days. “Maybe you should try and go to the doctor’s today? We can always go fishing later.”

Akira didn’t say anything to that. Instead she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close to her chest to cuddle, closing her eyes as she willed herself back to feeling better. A thought she’s refused to acknowledge crept back up from the pit at the back of her mind where she kicked all the things she didn’t have it in her to think about down. A possibility she _absolutely_ would not waste time even considering stubbornly floating at the edge of her mind. She squeezed Morgana in her arms and when he started purring she allowed the noise and rumble to lull her back into a state of calm again.

“Yeah,” She said, letting herself sink into thoughts she could control instead. Her schedule for the day, things she needed to do, friends to call. “Maybe after we get something to eat?”

* * *

She didn’t make an appointment. 

Instead she chose to distract Morgana with a promise of sushi at a nearby restaurant she had a coupon for and a video call with Ann. She didn’t stop feeling terrible for the rest of the day, even as the aftershocks of the nightmare let up and she stopped feeling like her nerves were attached to a livewire.

The next morning she woke from a nightmare she _could_ remember - an eden gone rotten, her hands covered in blood, Maruki standing over her looking beatific as he held out a still beating heart to her to take, a body in black and blue still spasming under her hands - and spent twenty minutes curled over her toilet dry heaving. The thought she still refused to acknowledge circled like a shark, smelling blood. She punched it in the nose and hurried through her morning routine as quickly as she could. Managing, somehow, to skitter away to school before Morgana could corner her about a doctor’s appointment once more.

The god was back in her room a few nights later.

 _“Trickster.”_ A deep, resonating voice murmured softly in her ear. Too close, _too close._ The voice rattled her bones, reverberated through her organs and clawed her mind. There was no pain though, and that at least was something like a relief.

There was a strange kind of affection lilting the god’s words, curling the edges of the layered echo of his voice. Too long fingers tipped with sharp, dangerous points gently caressed her face. A cool palm was cupping her cheek, the touch gentle and soft and the last thing she wanted as she blinked fully awake.

The first thing she saw was golden eyes. Glinting and ancient. They flashed in a light that was not there as they peered out from the darkness of her room.

He was back again. Akira wasn’t certain why she was surprised.

“It’s you.” She said, for lack of having any idea what the appropriate thing to say in such a situation would be. What, exactly, was the protocol for having her bedroom invaded by a god in the middle of the night? Where exactly in the rules for polite social etiquette her mother tried to drill into her did it cover being pawed at by an interdimensional being?

The hand on her cheek shifted, finger stroking along the angle of her cheekbone. Her skin crawled where the cool not-quite-flesh touched her. She wanted to rip his hand away, crush and snap his fingers so he couldn’t touch her again, tear out his eyes so he would stop _looking at her_ . She could see him now, truly see him, and it made her blood boil with a feral rage she’d almost forgotten she was capable of _._ Her fingers twitched as a nose bumped gently against the crown of her forehead, but she found that other than those tiny movements she was frozen in place _._

 _“Sweet Trickster.”_ He murmured again, stroking her cheek with his thumb. 

The fondness of the touch was familiar, he’d done something similar before in one of those other times he’d invaded her room. It had hurt then, pieces of a god brushing over what she supposed was likely her bare soul more than her actual body. 

_“I’ve gotten better. You can see now.”_ He purred in that low, endless voice of his, self satisfaction clear in his tone.

A few years ago as a normal girl she would have screamed in panic and tried to run from the room. A few months ago as a Phantom Thief she would have reached for the sharp knife she kept tucked beneath her pillow and driven the sharp point into one of his glinting eyes. The parts of her that she’d called _Arsene_ when she still had access to the Metaverse shifted behind her eyes. A tiger only just caged. She could tear him apart, burn him to ashes, shoot him in his awful smug face the way she had Yaldabaoth a scarce few months ago if she could only just _move._

She had knowledge of things now, an awareness of the world and the worlds beyond the world. Of realities not her own, of Tricksters and of Gods - false or otherwise. Where before her time in the Metaverse she might have been afraid, now she understood. And with that understanding came unbridled _rage._ So deep and furious that it threatened to devour her whole. It was her rage that had called Arsene to her, her rage that let her look into the face of a false god and smile.

The god that settled around her now was not like Yaldabaoth. Was no pretender God. The one that perched above her was greater than that. Far more powerful. _Dangerous._ And that fact changed absolutely nothing.

Akira would still fight him. Even knowing what he was, how little power she had in that moment, the fury that she kept carefully banked for the sake of everyone else burned within her with a reckless need to snap and snarl. His presence was an insult, his touches a proclamation of war. He was a god and thought himself able to do whatever he pleased as a result. She could feel it in his sing-song voice, his too-familiar touches. He saw her as a toy to play with. 

And she would be _damned_ if she was reduced to a means of entertainment for some pompous deity once more.

The God crooned faintly as if pleased and she wondered if he could read her mind. If he found her rage and fury endearing. It wasn’t anywhere out of the realm of possibility that he saw her thoughts as clearly as he did the expression on her face. He’d known she couldn’t properly perceive him last time and had made efforts to change that. Which left her with a simple question.

“Why?” Her voice was thin, but managed to maintain the sharpness she felt even muffled in the quiet dark. Usually even the smallest sound bounced around the bare walls of her childhood room, but now something hulking was absorbing the noise. It was the rest of him, the bits she couldn’t see, filling up the empty spaces, taking over every inch of her room as if it was his own to command.

The grin the God wore pulled wider, too many sharp teeth shining unnaturally in the darkness. A clawed hand gently brushed a dark lock of hair away from her face. _“You need to see me, to hear me.”_ He answered in that strange, resonating voice of his. He crouched low, mouth so close to her ear that she expected to feel his breath on her skin. She didn’t though, Gods - she considered - didn’t need to breathe.

Instead she felt the rumble of his voice overwhelm her, rattling through every cell in her body, the force of it - even whispered - threatening to tear her apart.

_“How else can I court you, Darling Trickster?”_

She woke - unaware that she’d even been sleeping - with a start, lurching upright in bed and all but flinging Morgana across the room in her frantic movements. Her friend yowled in surprise, scrambling to get to his feet in the aftermath of her violent waking.

“Akira? What’s the matter?” 

The single high call of her friend filled with a startled concern. Not the echo of a thousand voices compressed into one. She slapped at the light switch by her bed and scanned the illuminated room, hand diving for her knife as she cast a wary glance over the sparse space.

No golden eyes or sharp teeth or sweet words.

No God.

She gasped then, lungs burning, and realized that she hadn’t been breathing for awhile. Her head swam a little from the rush of air filling her lungs again and she slumped against her headboard. Morgana was skittering back up on the bed, ears flat against his head as he scanned the room with her, unsure just what was happening or what to be wary of. She squeezed her eyes closed, took in one deep, shutting breath after another. When she opened her eyes again her gaze landed on her bedside table, stomach twisting as she saw something sitting where only empty space rested when she’d gone to bed.

She clutched the opened pocket knife in her hand tight enough to hurt, poking at the strange thing with the sharpened tip. A flower, white and golden, faintly glowing even beneath the light of her lamp. Morgana moved to stand cautiously beside her on the bed, ear’s flat against his head as he stared at the blossom, unease apparent in every line of his body. He recognized the bloom as easily as Akira had. It was impossible _not_ to recognize it, they’d collected thousands of them over the past year. Shining bright and beautiful against the twisted dark tunnels of Mementos.

* * *

_I want to go home,_ Akira thought miserably as she curled up against the wall of her bathroom.

While she didn’t believe that going back to Tokyo would in any way allow her to escape her supernatural stalker, she would admit that she’d feel better back in the familiar comfort of her little room in LaBlanc with all her friends nearby. A selfish thought, she knew, a small sense of comfort at the expense of the safety of her loved ones. It was a thought she couldn’t shake off or bury all the same though. The thought was the last she had before sleep took her, the first thing that came to her each morning she woke from another invasion from the damnable god that lurked in her dreams.

It was perhaps unfair for her to say that in the past three weeks since she’d left Tokyo she’d missed Soujiro’s fatherly affection and dry sense of humor more than she’d missed both her parents combined in the entire year she’d been away. It was the truth, though, and not one she’d flinch away from. Her family wasn’t the mess or tragedy some of her friends had to endure, but she knew well enough to understand that her home life wasn’t normal either.

Her parents lived their lives by a checklist. They figured out what was expected of a perfectly respectable life, made a list of all the most important bits, and stuck to it like any small misstep would mean the end of the world.

Attend a good university. Find a good job. Marry an appropriate spouse. Each event a line to be crossed out, a task completed. Akira herself hadn’t been anything more than the next thing on their list - a well mannered child to complete their paint by numbers life. The fact that Akira _hadn’t_ been a terribly well mannered child had been a strain on everyone involved. Even before her run in with Shido and the mess that followed she’d been just a little too much for them to know how to handle. To them she was a hassle: sarcastic, mischievous and often too bored with the mundanity of their lives for them to even know what to do with her.

Their treatment of her wasn’t terrible, she’d suffered no harm under them or faced any kind of abuse at their hands. But they weren’t affectionate either. Affection was messy, difficult to order or control. As soon as they could they’d begun parenting her from behind a glass wall of calculated aloofness. Her childhood was something they observed from a distance, interfering with only to maintain the parameters they’d set.

They hadn’t called once after sending her to live with Soujiro - a man her father only just knew through a coworker he’d briefly worked with years earlier. When she returned - cleared of all charges and proven innocent from the start - there was no welcome party waiting for her. Her parents met her with the same cool politeness and subtly strained expressions they always wore when speaking to her and in place of warm welcomes she’d been politely reminded of the household schedule. Morgana had been bewildered. Akira had only been able to shrug at his wide eyed stare.

She’d been considering asking Soujiro if she could come back before the school year went on too much longer, and finish high school up back in Tokyo. Back with the only people she ever really felt the concept of _family_ with. Convincing her mother and father would have been difficult - they needed to show themselves as the dutiful, appreciative parents to their neighbors and various social circles, and sending her away again so soon would tarnish that - but she still had held out hope. With Morgana’s help she’d been crafting a list of reasons for why she should go back that they couldn’t object to. If nothing else she’d just threaten to be exactly the kind of unhinged ruffian she’d so often been accused of being growing up. That at least would assure that they’d hustle her out of sight of the rest of the town.

Of course, all that planning proved largely unnecessary. Her lack of planning had done enough to get her a one way ticket out of her parents’ lives.

Morgana had eased up on his demands she go to the doctor after she told him about the god that had begun taking up space in her mind each night. He seemed to think the nausea and lightheadedness was a result of the god’s meddling with her head. She’d even believed it herself for a few days - grinding her metaphorical bootheal into that taunting thought that had been flaring to life more and more over the past couple weeks. Her staunch determination to stick her head in the sand, of course, came to nothing in the end.

A god fiddling in her head might be cause for headaches and dizziness, even perhaps cause a stomach upset - _maybe_. But she doubted that the deity of personal space invasion could claim responsibility for her aching lower back and tender chest. She could attribut the stress of the god’s nightly accosting of her rest and sanity as the cause of her latest skipped period, but she couldn’t exactly blame the handsy dimension hopper on the period she had missed the month before.

After the third test in as many days she resigned herself to the fact that any hope of a false negative was off the table. 

She’d been accused of being reckless so many times over the past year and change. Getting into a fight with a corrupt and powerful politician. Becoming the leader of the most wanted thieves in the country. Letting herself catch feelings for someone who was planning to kill her. Throwing herself into danger again and again and again. 

The words had never stuck on her though, never really settled in until that moment. So many stupid things she’d done and managed to skate by on as unscathed as she could hope to be. Of course it was the one night that reality itself had warped out of existence that would make the consequences stick.

“Shit.” She swore, hands rising to bury in her hair as she stared at the test perched on the rim of the bathtub. In the distance she heard Morgana calling for her, further still her parents going about their normal routine downstairs. She ignored all of it and curled in on herself, arms dropping to wrap tentatively and disbelievingly around her middle.

The two pink lines peered up from the home pregnancy test perched on the edge of the tub, unchanging and unavoidable.

_“Shit.”_


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akira comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is interested, my tumblr is [here!](https://unfunny-quips.tumblr.com/)

_ He was getting old _ , Sojiro thought as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

He gaze was pulled from the pour over before him on the counter to the dark haired girl slumped at one of the booths. Akira. Strong willed, clever and capable. In the year he’d looked after the kid she’d gone from a delinquent he’d been too soft hearted to turn away to a second daughter he loved as fiercely as he did Futaba. Sending her back to her parents had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. He’d only been able to go through with it because he knew that Akira was bound and determined to be back in Tokyo as soon as she could. And his faith in how unstoppable she could be when she got her mind settled on something.

He hadn’t expected it to be quite like this though.

He’d almost hadn’t recognized her as he arrived at the cafe to open up. Looking smaller and younger than he’d ever seen her as she sat on LeBlanc’s stoop. Curled up with Morgana in her arms, asleep and leaning against the cafe door, her bag tucked securely under her bent legs to keep it from anyone dumb enough to try and steal from a theif.

She’d woken with a start before he could even reach her, dark grey eyes zeroing in on him in a moment. He could see she was ready for a fight as he watched her hand dive for something hidden between her body and the door she leaned against. It was a knife, he saw later while helping pull her to her feet. The same nice - if a bit oversized - folding pocket knife he’d given her as a parting gift before she got on the train. It had been his, back in his days working for the government, handy and sharp, with a good grip to the handle making it easier to use in a fight if it came down to it.

She tucked it back in her pocket before letting herself be ushered into the cafe, looking more like a brewing storm than a teenage girl. He hadn’t asked yet why she was there, why she hadn’t called to let him know she was coming or to ask him to pick her up from the train station. 

The dark circles under her eyes told him enough, the overstuffed bag she carried with her said even more.

Sojiro had never liked Akira’s parents.

Perhaps it was unfair since he didn’t actually know them. He’d only spoken to them briefly on the phone to settle the arrangement of Akira staying with him for her probation and then once more to let them know she’d been cleared of charges just before she’d been set to go home. He felt confident in saying that it was enough to dislike them though. If only because in an entire  _ year _ of being the guardian of their child - a man they had never even met, and only knew through a tenuous mutual friend - they hadn’t called  _ once. _

He couldn’t even imagine shipping Futaba off to some stranger and not hearing  _ anything _ about his daughter in that amount of time, let alone not hearing  _ from  _ her. The thought of not knowing if she was okay for a single day - a single second - was enough to make him want to go on a warpath.

And here Akira was, not even a month after being returned to her own parents, and already she was back looking for sanctuary in his cafe.

He poured them each a cup of coffee and carried them over to the booth. He wanted a cigarette but stifled the urge - Futaba had been on him about smoking recently - trying to settle his nerves by sliding in beside the dark haired girl and reassuring himself that he sat between her and the rest of the world. She blinked at the coffee set before her but didn’t move to drink it. In her arms Morgana meowed, one white paw reaching up to pat gently at the side of her face. Not for the first time Sojiro wished he was able to understand the blue eyed cat the way the kids were able to. He got the impression the feline would be more than happy to keep Sojiro in the loop on the crazy things they got up to.

“Want to tell me what happened?” He asked, watching as she stared blankly into the coffee before her. She’d not quite met his eye since he’d led her into the cafe proper. It set his teeth on edge, seeing her revert back to that guarded, uncertain girl he’d first met over a year ago.

Akira took a settling breath, eyes closing for a moment before she spoke. 

“I fucked up.” Akira’s voice was calm and even. The kind of voice used to talk about the weather or train schedules. She gave a familiar, absent shrug as she added. “They kicked me out.”

Sojiro sighed.

“Kid, I’m going to need a little more to go on.” He settled a hand on her shoulder, trying to be reassuring and feeling like he was failing miserably. Fatherhood hadn’t come easy to him, and though he thought he was getting better there were just some things that he came up short on every time. Heart to hearts was one of them. “Come on, tell me what happened. It can’t be any worse than everything we’ve gone through over the past year.”

Akira seemed to find the statement funny, a short and faintly manic burst of laughter bubbling up from her before she clapped a hand over her mouth. Morgana meowed again, and Sojiro almost thought he could hear the concern in the cat’s voice. Akira shook her head - at what the cat in her arms just said or at herself Sojiro wasn’t certain. 

“Sorry,” She said, mouth pulling into a wry smile that did nothing to put Sojiro at ease. She didn’t look any more relaxed than she had a moment ago, but at least she was looking at him again. “I just...I have no idea how to start.” He watched as she let Morgana settle into her lap, hands coming up to scrub at her face.

Sojiro gave a small shrug, trying to give the impression of unshakability. If Akira was feeling unsteady then he needed to be something solid she could lean on. “Start with the easiest thing to talk about then.”

He watched the girl beside him nod, expression thoughtful. After a beat she slumped back in the booth and gave a tired sigh, eyes turning back to the cup before her. He noticed she still hadn’t touched it and wondered. The kid had been a fiend for coffee before, even more so once he started teaching her the finer points of the craft of creating a quality cup. He didn’t think she’d ever said no a perfectly brewed mug of blue mountain in her entire life. Then again he’d heard from Futaba who had heard from Ann that the girl had a stomach bug recently. Maybe she was still queasy, she looked a bit green in the gills.

“There’s this... God? I guess that’s what he’d be called.” Akira said, pulling Sojiro from his thoughts. “He’s from the Metaverse and he’s just,  _ ugh. _ ” He watched her brow furrow, expression somewhere between apprehension and disgust. 

“He keeps showing up in my dreams and won’t leave me alone and he keeps touchi-” She cut herself off, hands curling into fists on the table. For a brief moment Sojiro saw a true and burning anger flash in her gaze before she seemed to wrestle it down.

“I thought the metaverse was gone?” He asked, trying to find a foothold in the conversation. He thought she was going to tell him about the undoubtedly terrible treatment of her parents - so he was completely biased against them, sue him, she was his kid far more than she’d ever been theirs as far as Sojiro was concerned. Talk of the Metaverse had been the last thing he’d been expecting from this conversation. “And wait, you don’t mean that god you guys killed do you?”

He was pretty sure he remembered them, very proudly, recounting their efforts to save the world by shooting a controlling god in the face. He thought it had been a metaphor at the time but subsequent conversations with Futaba had revealed that  _ no, _ Akira had actually shot a god in the face with a gun powered by the dark haired girl’s bonds of friendship.

“No,” Akira said, shaking her head. “We lost access to the Metaverse, but it’s still  _ there _ .” She gave another shrug, “And no, not that one This one is...different. I don’t know who he is. He tried telling me his name but,” He watched her make a vague hand motion towards her head, “It’s just, white noise and static.”

Sojiro took a sip of his coffee. If this was the  _ easy _ part of the conversation he wasn’t certain he was going to be able to handle the difficult part. Not that he was going to let Akira know that. The girl needed a steadying presence, even if one that was totally lost in the conversation.

Morgana meowed, jumping up on the table to sit beside Akira’s untouched cup. There was normally a rule about cats on the cafe tables, but Sojiro hadn’t technically opened yet and it felt  _ rude _ to admonish the feline when he knew that the creature had a human level of intelligence. The cat kept meowing, seeming insistent. Akira fidgetted beneath the cat’s gaze and Sojiro watched them have a short stare off, punctuated by Morgana meowing again and getting to his feet, the fur along his back rising.

“There’s something more to this... _ god _ ...than him just bothering you in your sleep I take it?” He asked, watching as Akira’s expression shifted to conflicted. She was silent for a long time, and Sojiro thought she might refuse to talk at all until Morgana yowled something at her, stamping one white paw for emphasis.

“Fine. Okay, I’ll...I’ll tell him.” Akira said to the feline, sounding more defeated than Sojiro thought he’d ever heard the girl. She sighed and scrubbed her face with her hands before casting an apologetic look to the cat. “Can you just, give us a few minutes? I promise I’ll tell you everything soon I just...I’m not ready just yet.”

Sojiro watched in fascination as the feline’s face twisted into an expression of apprehension and concern that was far too human to be comfortable witnessing. At length though Morgana nodded, hopping down from the table and moving to the Cafe entrance expectantly. Sojiro dutifully stood and opened the door for him, feeling just as wildly out of his depth dealing with Morgana now as he did the first time he became aware of the cat’s status as a supernatural being.

Back at the table, Akira took a shuddering breath, seeming to steal herself. He slid back into the booth and set a comforting hand on her shoulder as she broke what was undoubtedly going to be bad news to him.

“The god is a problem.” She said, frowning down at her hands, “But that’s not...not really the  _ big _ issue.”

Sojiro tilted his head so he could look at her over the rim of his glasses, trying to radiate encouragement without saying anything. Akira was wound tighter than a bow string beside him, anxiety strong enough that not even the use of her oversized glasses and the fall of her untamed bangs could help hide it. 

“I mean, he  _ is _ an issue.” Akira continued, voice rising in pitch as she kept going, an undercurrent of barely contained frantic energy splicing her words. “I don’t know what he really wants or why. I don’t know how to deal with him, especially if I can’t get a hold of Igor and Lavenza. And what if he decides he wants to go after everyone else? He could-”

She was starting to spiral, and Sojiro was quick to settle a hand on her back, trying to rub comforting circles like he did for Futaba sometimes when she had a panic attack. Akira stopped rambling at least, though he could still feel a faint tremor running through her body. He tried to remember if he had a paper bag lying around, she looked like she might start hyperventilating soon.

“Hey kid, come on.” He said, trying to calm her down. “Deep breath, whatever it is we can handle-”

“I’m pregnant.”

* * *

Soujiro sat for a long moment, head in hands, not speaking. 

Akira did her best not to fidget, instead focusing on the shine of the lacquered table in the low light of the cafe lamps.

Fatigue tugged at her, making her eyes feel heavy and sting in a way that said she was likely going to fall asleep were she sat given enough time in silence. The rush of anxiety prior to telling him the news had keyed her up, but as the minutes ticked by in ever more suffocating silence she found herself diving back into the realm of exhaustion.

Next to her Soujiro abruptly stood, his long legs taking him to the counter in a few strides. Akira watched as he settled his hands on the bar, his head bowed as he took in a deep, steadying breath. After another moment he turned to look at her, a weary expression matching her own on his face.

“Explain it to me, from the beginning.” He said, looking startling older than he really was at that moment.

Guilt lanced her painfully. Soujiro didn’t deserve what she’d just dropped on his lap. He’d been so kind to her through everything, caring and protective and so much like what she could only assume what fathers - real fathers - were like.

She curled her hands into fists, fought the urge to dig her fingernails into the flesh of her palm and draw blood. As grounding as it might have been, it would only worry Sojiro. And she had already made him worry enough for a lifetime with the Phantom Thieves thing. She didn’t need to be adding more.

“I- ” She started, stalled. Completely at a loss as to how she was going to explain a situation that involved a slightly deranged school counselor, a fake reality and a mistake made with a boy dead for months at that point. “Where should I start?”

She risked a glance towards Sojiro and found his kind grey eyes settled on her. Apprehension and something else. Not the anger or censure that her parents had glared at her with the day before, but a soft look she wasn’t sure how to name. Fatherly, maybe, if she let herself hope. 

He gave a sigh, “How about we start with the…” He faltered some, expression pinched, then made a broad motion. “You know.”

Akira did know. It was a hard thing to forget.

Swallowing she gave a slow nod thankful and regretful all at once that she’d sent Morgana out for this conversation. She hadn’t told him yet, had managed to get her things packed up and get them both to the train station before he could find out from overhearing from her furious parents just what had led to their sudden eviction. There were questions that he would ask, things he would and wouldn’t understand, accusation, maybe even anger. Definitely anger.

Telling Sojiro wasn’t something she could avoid though. He read her better than most, and was wise enough to catch on to what her predicament was even if she didn’t tell him. Besides, she’d need his guidance to get through the whole mess, it wasn’t as if she had any idea what to do.

“We’ll talk later, right?” Morgana had asked before they boarded the train the night before when she’d refused to go tell him why they were returning to Tokyo so suddenly. He’d sounded so young and uncertain in that moment that it’d  _ hurt. _

Akira had offered him an unsteady smile and nodded. “For sure,” She told him. She still didn’t know if it was a lie or not.

Sojiro moved to reclaim his seat next to her in the booth, breaking her from her reverie. There was something guarded about the grey haired man’s expression, though she could see traces of apprehension there. She’d been quiet for too long, she realized as Sojiro tilted his head and offered a worried, “Kid?”

She let out a breath and realized only then how long she’d been holding it. 

“Yeah, I just…” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “Sorry. There’s just...a lot.” She pulled her glasses off and rubbed at where they left indents on the bridge of her nose. 

“Futaba told you about the alternate reality?” She asked, needing to be sure he had at least some basic understanding before diving in.

Soujiro nodded, “While we were working on getting you out of jail.” He rubbed the back of his head absently, “Tell you the truth, kid, a lot of it went over my head. I got the basics. That school counselor of yours did something that caused a new reality and it changed a lot of things. Brought Wakab- brought  _ several _ people back…”

He looked at her for confirmation and she nodded, trying not to let the tremor of her hands shiver through the rest of her as she remembered that world. Perfect and wonderful and awful. The greatest temptation she’d ever faced, only able to let it go at the insistence of the one person who she was willing to throw it all away for.

Her eyes burned at the memory, but the threat of tears was banished with practiced ease and a steadying breath. She hadn’t cried in years - barring one specific incident she would not be letting herself dwell on - and the person she might cry for would have only been repulsed by her tears. Curling in on herself a little was the closest she allowed herself to get to tears.

“There was...someone I cared about in that world.” She hedged, unable to say a name just yet. Maybe ever. It was too fresh, hurt too much to think about. Soujiro settled a comforting arm around her shoulders, and she took strength from the gesture. “He - we were  _ together _ there. Once.” Akira paused, feeling heat flood her cheeks in embarrassment and she chose to stare at the grain of the pattern on the table rather than risk meeting Sojiro’s eye. “You...know what I mean?”

Soujiro coughed awkwardly, looking as uncomfortable as she felt. After an awkward pause she forced herself forward. 

“He’s... _ gone _ . Here, in this world.” She said, feeling the cold of those words.

“ _ Shit _ , kid.” Soujiro sighed and suddenly she found herself tugged to his side and his other arm coming up to wrap her up in a warm hug.

Her eyes blurred at the gesture and she stomped down hard at the urge to sniffle. Hormones, she decided, made things messy and difficult. She couldn’t imagine her quiet, reserved mother going through the indignity of it all. Maybe Akira had been adopted. It certainly would have explained a few things about the many differences between herself and her parents. 

Akira buried her face in Soujiro’s shoulder and let the smell of curry and coffee and the cologne that only ever smelled like  _ dad _ to her soothe the worry from her wrung out frame. A big hand stroked her head and she was so overwhelmed by the sense of  _ family _ that it nearly choked her.

So often over the year she’d spent living with him she wondered. Wondered at the idea that the sense of comfort and support was  _ normal _ , that her own parents - distant, cold and largely uninterested in her as anything more than another prop in their pristine life - had failed her growing up. Going back had been a trial and there had been more than once in the weeks leading up to her returning to the countryside where the idea of just  _ refusing _ to go back had gripped her. Plans of barricading herself in her dusty loft above the cafe or hiding in Futaba’s room until people stopped looking for her or seeing if one of her confidants around the city would be willing to stash her away until her parents stopped asking. A thousand wild, frantic plots that might allow her to stay with the Sakuras.

At length she gathered herself, dried eyed. With a single, steadying breath she pushed on. 

“I don’t know how it happened.” She said, and then at Soujiro’s raised eyebrows she pushed forward with a blush and a frantic, “He wasn’t  _ real! _ I mean he  _ was _ , but not, not in this world. Everything reset so it shouldn’t, in this world we never -”

Burying her face in her hands seemed the better part of valor. 

Soujiro seemed to think the same as he didn’t comment on the  _ how  _ of her situation again. He cleared his throat instead, letting her take a breath. After a moment he opened his mouth, hesitating before meeting her eye and asking, “It was Akechi, wasn’t it?”

Her chest seized at the sound of his name. She hadn’t heard it spoken aloud since she’d left. Even then she’d stepped so far back behind the mask of being  _ okay _ that she’d been insulated from the sharp pain of it. To hear it again, when she was exhausted and scared and flailing, struck so hard as to feel like a physical blow.

Her eyes burned, but she closed them tightly, forcing herself to breathe through the grief she’d locked away in the wake of Akechi Goro’s second death. If she shattered now, if she fell apart when it was only just the  _ beginning  _ of it all, she was never going to survive. And she  _ had _ to survive. There was no other choice.

“Akira…” Sojiro sounded so soft, so  _ understanding _ that it almost broke her. 

Almost, but didn’t.

She took a breath, then another. Opened her eyes - bright but not burning anymore - and turned to look at him. “Please...please don’t...don’t tell anyone.” The words came in shuttered bursts, painful but necessary.

She loved her friends, but she understood them too well to think that they would willingly accept the choice she had made, the chance she’d grabbed tightly with desperate, shaking hands. They’d see it as a betrayal. Definitive proof that she hadn’t been as willing as they needed her to be to refuse Maruki’s perfect world. They wanted Akira to be the idealized version of themselves. Selfless, assured, confident. Able to make the difficult decisions for them so they didn’t have to feel weighed down by such responsibility. Learning that just who the father of her child was would break the fragile connections that bound them together.  _ Shatter  _ them.

“ _ Please, _ ” She was close to begging and she  _ hated _ herself for it. “Just...I’ll figure out something to tell them, but please don’t say anything.”

Sojiro was quiet for a long moment before giving a long sigh. “Kid…” She watched as he removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked so  _ weary  _ and she was certain that he would say no. That he wasn’t going to make such a promise to her. 

“I won’t say anything.” He said at length, meeting her gaze with his own steady one. “But Akira...Just, think about telling them alright? I get the feeling that you’re afraid of how they’re going to react,” The smile he gave her was slight and soft, “But just keep in mind that they all love you as much as you love them.”

Her heart clenched. Sojiro meant well, but she could easily imagine the disaster that would come from the reveal that the father of her child was the very person that had almost destroyed them. The same person that had almost killed Akira -  _ would _ have killed Akira if they hadn’t made steps to avoid it - and who had murdered Haru’s father in cold blood.

Haru would never speak to Akira again if she found out. The other’s would never trust her again.

“I’ll think about it,” she lied. 

She was good at that, lying. She shouldn’t be proud of the fact, but lies had saved her life far more often than honesty ever had.

The lie made Sojiro smile, and that’s really all that mattered to her in that moment.

“That’s all I can ask.” He gave her another sideways hug, all reassurance and comfort, before leaning back and moving to pull out his phone. “Now I’m assuming you haven’t gone to a doctor yet.” He started and she watched as he pulled up Takemi’s number. “Let’s see if we can fix that before Futaba comes back from her weekend with Kana, yeah?”

* * *

It was a dream. A memory.  _ Both. _ Hazy and real and terrible and beautiful. Every detail had been etched into her, every second of that night preserved perfectly in her mind. Not the visiting god that taunted her with plans to woo her or nightmares of horrors real and imagined tormenting her.

Just Leblanc on a February night. Just her. Just him.

Goro.

“What’s a life worth in a reality that was cooked up just to satisfy someone else?” She watched him turn his back to her, a guarded look over his shoulder. The final nail in the coffin. The decision that was ultimately his to make, for all Maruki came to offer her the deal. He didn’t even hesitate.

She didn’t know why she thought he would.

“I say none.” Sharp, pointed, certain. His gaze turned away from her, dismissive.

She wanted to argue with him, wanted to agree with him, wanted to  _ fight _ . Fight Maruki, fight Goro, fight the entire damn world. Wanted to do more than just stand there and let him decide what his life meant to her.

She told him his life wasn’t trivial. Not to her. He’d laughed at that, all sharp eyes and rueful smile. She felt her heart chip away a little more at that, felt the sliver of hope lodged in her chest turn poisonous and barbed. Maruki offered them a second chance, but Goro wasn’t interested.

It wasn’t that simple, of course.

It was never that simple, especially not with him. With them. But that didn’t change the way her hands shook or the way her eyes  _ burned _ . 

“We have to win this - no matter what.” He said to the open air before him, to the night that stretched on beyond Leblanc’s door, to the twisted, perfect world that stretched out before them. There was finality in those words, the kind of back handed goodbye he’d given her in Shido’s Palace after the bulkhead fell, before he sacrificed himself. In her mind she saw the wall dropping, heard the shots, the rush of water, the confirmation from Futaba that he was  _ gone _ .

He moved as if to walk away. She lunged forward, caught his hand in hers....

And awoke in the Velvet Room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Sojiro just wants to make sure his kids are okay, Akira would much rather just bury her emotions and not talk about it thanks.
> 
> I already had this chapter written out and ready to go before posting the first one so I decided to go ahead and post it real quick. I'm afraid I can't promise such quick updates going forward, but I will be updating as soon as I have chapters completed to post.
> 
> Thank you everyone who has read and please leave a comment letting me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working late shift tonight, and instead of finishing up my work I'm posting this because I'll be damned if I let my better judgement start having a say in things at this point haha
> 
> This is another one of my WIPs that I've decided to go ahead and post instead of sitting on forever. This one actually has the next chapter completed already so it will likely be updated sooner than the rest, though how often it will be updated past that I have no idea.
> 
> This is a slightly different take on AkiRen than the other fics I posted (and not just because of the genderbending). My head canon is that AkiRen post P5R has a lot of anger and grief over Maruki's palace and not really many people to talk to about it. The Thieves were there, but they missed quite a bit of stuff that I think really would have stuck with AkiRen and there's a lot tangled up in Akechi that probably wouldn't be easy for AkiRen to talk about.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and please leave a comment letting me know what you think!


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